Headline's kinda misleading. They're not telling kids with Asperger's Syndrome they don't have it, they're telling them that - as people have argued since it was made a DSM-IV diagnosis - they have autism.

Well, it's every 10-15 years, and the reason is that more and more research - thanks to the move of psychiatry into the biochemical and physiological schools of thought in the last 30 years - is showing that what everyone thought were different diseases - like autism and aspergers, were really variants of the same disease. Aspergers diagnosis is not going away, it's just merging with autism under it's diagnostic umbrella.

FTFA:-Eliminating the term "gender identity disorder." It has been used for children or adults who strongly believe that they were born the wrong gender. But many activists believe the condition isn't a disorder and say calling it one is stigmatizing. The term would be replaced with "gender dysphoria," which means emotional distress over one's gender. Supporters equated the change with removing homosexuality as a mental illness in the diagnostic manual, which happened decades ago.

That's a huge thing for the transgender community. It means it's one step closer to treating transgenderism as a birth defect or medical condition, and not as a mental illness.

ecmoRandomNumbers:And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

To be fair, Aspergers' Syndrome is used by a lot of Internet Doctors to diagnose themselves so they can have an excuse to continue to act like complete asses to everyone.

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

It's the parents who are the nightmare, not the kids. I taught for 10 years. The kids are great. Parents suck.

BronyMedic:Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

To be fair, Aspergers' Syndrome is used by a lot of Internet Doctors to diagnose themselves so they can have an excuse to continue to act like complete asses to everyone.

To be fair. I really hate that saying. To be fair, some people are just complete asses all the time, no diagnosis needed.

ecmoRandomNumbers:Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

It's the parents who are the nightmare, not the kids. I taught for 10 years. The kids are great. Parents suck.

most parents don't get the support they need and they think it's bad parenting because they're told this by everyone around them. "Oh, no. Your kid is totally normal. All kinds of kids line up cars like that and spin their wheels. It's just you" But it's all because they want to get out of their responsibilities right? Riiiiight.

I wonder if there have been stat's taken on bad parents of normal children vs. bad parents of special needs children. It would be interesting to see if one group was being held to a higher standard than the other as well.

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

And are you going to be there when the time comes to shove your little snowflake out the door to unload him on the public school or community college systems so that those of us who are paying attention to (or paying for) our classes (they are teachers not babysitters you see) won't have to deal with outbursts and disruptions.

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

I have been meet people with mild and severe autism, and I think I understand, at least to a very small extent, the difficulties caregiver go through. However, the reason people (myself included) make comments like ecmoRandomNumbers did is because of the phenomenon of self-diagnosed ass-burgers:

Kelli Gibson of Battle Creek, Michigan, who has four sons with various forms of autism, said Saturday she welcomes the change. Her boys all had different labels in the old diagnostic manual, including a 14-year-old with Asperger's.

"To give it separate names never made sense to me," Gibson said. "To me, my children all had autism."

Three of her boys receive special education services in public school; the fourth is enrolled in a school for disabled children. The new autism diagnosis won't affect those services, Gibson said. She also has a 3-year-old daughter without autism.

wildcardjack:I think the term autism is too broad to really define any one problem. Calling something "a spectrum disorder" is just a cop-out.

You're absolutely right, but it's not a cop-out, it's an acknowledgment. There are already multiple discrete known pathologies under the ASD label, from Rett syndrome to fragile X. An ASD diagnosis is a description of behavior, not neuroanatomy or biochemistry.

common sense is an oxymoron:wildcardjack: I think the term autism is too broad to really define any one problem. Calling something "a spectrum disorder" is just a cop-out.

You're absolutely right, but it's not a cop-out, it's an acknowledgment. There are already multiple discrete known pathologies under the ASD label, from Rett syndrome to fragile X. An ASD diagnosis is a description of behavior, not neuroanatomy or biochemistry.

I'll add... anyone that spends enough time with a group that suffer from autism, would learn how different each one is, hence the spectrum.

Mutt Farkinov:FTA: "Some who have the condition embrace their quirkiness and vow to continue to use the label."

This reads a bit off. Like the someday Asperger's will be claimed as the cool retro-hipster range of Autism.

It's not as if they can't "embrace their quirkiness" under an ASD label as easily as under an Aspie label. (Disclaimer: I used the latter myself sometimes before it was clear that DSM-5 was going to drop it.) Some people just don't want to share a label with someone whose quirks are too big to embrace.

All this change does is consolidate several conditions with similar presentations, while bringing the diagnostic threshold in line with those of mood and personality disorders: A quirk isn't a disorder until it starts causing problems.

albuquerquehalsey:Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

I have been meet people with mild and severe autism, and I think I understand, at least to a very small extent, the difficulties caregiver go through. However, the reason people (myself included) make comments like ecmoRandomNumbers did is because of the phenomenon of self-diagnosed ass-burgers:

The "Disease of the Week" phenomenon has two sides. Some people find out about something they've been enduring for a lifetime without knowing why they're in pain/can't concentrate/can't understand the myriad unspoken rules of social interaction. Unfortunately, it seems like far more people find an excuse for malingering/scoring legal PEDs/acting like an asshole.

milsorgen:Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

And are you going to be there when the time comes to shove your little snowflake out the door to unload him on the public school or community college systems so that those of us who are paying attention to (or paying for) our classes (they are teachers not babysitters you see) won't have to deal with outbursts and disruptions.

wildcardjack:I think the term autism is too broad to really define any one problem. Calling something "a spectrum disorder" is just a cop-out.

One could say that about all sorts of mental illnesses.

They are all just general guidelines and evena contributor to the new dsm used the term guesswork on npr the other day.

I don't think the spectrum aspect is the problem. The reverse is likely true: people here x has aspergers and expect them to be too much like their idea of what aspergers is instead of giving plenty of individual leeway.

Heck, we do that with depression and that is arguably a simple disorder relative to many.

milsorgen:And are you going to be there when the time comes to shove your little snowflake out the door to unload him on the public school or community college systems so that those of us who are paying attention to (or paying for) our classes (they are teachers not babysitters you see) won't have to deal with outbursts and disruptions.

my autistic snowflake is 14. He's made it through so far. He might even be able to work one day if I can find an employer that would take him and a helper to do whatever. He won't ever go to college. I don't have that hope for him.

As for my son disrupting your life for a short period of time each day you go to class. Man the fark up. I'll bet the "normal" smart ass kid disrupts your class even more than the autistic kids, but that's okay with you because you get to laugh at the smart ass's jokes. The autistic kids are shuffled out of the classroom when they're having an outburst as quick as the teachers aide can move them. Try to have some compassion for their situation. You might even grow as a human being.

Methadone Girls:BronyMedic: Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

To be fair, Aspergers' Syndrome is used by a lot of Internet Doctors to diagnose themselves so they can have an excuse to continue to act like complete asses to everyone.

To be fair. I really hate that saying. To be fair, some people are just complete asses all the time, no diagnosis needed.

Chronic Assholism is an actual medical disorder. Their brains never developed the "don't be a dick" portion.

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

Awwwww... bless your heart. You're retarded!

A LOT of aspy parents were actively protesting this, writing in letters to editorial boards, and so on. They actually upped what it took to get a diagnosis of whatever they're calling it now, and a lot of parents were worried they would lose benefits - especially in school.

common sense is an oxymoron:wildcardjack: I think the term autism is too broad to really define any one problem. Calling something "a spectrum disorder" is just a cop-out.

You're absolutely right, but it's not a cop-out, it's an acknowledgment. There are already multiple discrete known pathologies under the ASD label, from Rett syndrome to fragile X. An ASD diagnosis is a description of behavior, not neuroanatomy or biochemistry.

Thank-you for posting this information. Like Wildcardjack, I was wondering how the two children I used to have the privilege of working with occasionally, both diagnosed with Asperger's, could just be lumped under the autism umbrella. These kids were so bright it was a joy to work with them. One read so fast, I wanted to jump up shout like a dingbat cheerleader each time this child finished a book. The other one would sometimes stop everything and start thinking. It was fascinating to watch. The child's body would grow increasing still, but the facial expression would become more and more intense. At these times, this childs' eyebrows seemed almost to speak. Thinking sessions were followed by a burst of academic activity. I didn't get to work with them much so I rarely observed the difficulty socializing that their parents spoke of. I sometimes observed other children being difficult towards them because they were slightly different. Of course, in a childs' world, being by far the fastest reader in the school, even if nothing else is unusual about a person, can make that child "different" in the eyes of his/her peers. Sometimes I imagined the non-diagnosed peers should have to go to therapy to learn how not to be so exclusive and judgmental.

Because people whose life problems stem from nothing but their own poor judgment and choices wish desperately to deny this fact: doing so is much easier and more convenient, not to mention less painful, than personal growth. And so they steal the names of legitimate problems in an attempt to excuse their own self-inflicted wounds.

In time, the people these terms were taken from -people whose problems truly are no fault of their own- become associated with the undesirables: the stigma intended for some very guilty people thus falls upon innocents. The term stops being useful to describe these unfortunates, and so a new one is needed. The old term becomes nothing but an insult, and eventually the undesirables try to take on the new term too, and so the cycle continues.

Such has become the case with, for example, Asperger's. There's a very real difference between someone with a legitimate and professionally-diagnosed case of this disorder -who have physiological problems preventing them from learning basic social skills- versus the sort of jerk who doesn't have these skills either, but was prevented by nothing but his own refusal to learn. But thanks to this latter group's co-opting of this term, the legitimate and serious problem has gotten a very bad reputation: one that, frankly, it doesn't deserve. And so there needs to be a new name, not to make the bad group feel better, but to distinguish the good group from it. Eventually the bad group will co-opt this new term too, but it will help for a time.

And in the meantime, Asperger's, and the terms derived from it, will join the ranks of "moron," "idiot," and "retarded": once-legitimate medical terms, now obsolete and used only as insults.

Methadone Girls:ecmoRandomNumbers: Methadone Girls: ecmoRandomNumbers: And some Asperger's families opposed any change, fearing their kids would lose a diagnosis and no longer be eligible for special services exempted from any type of accountability or responsibility.

awwwwwww...bless your heart. You don't know what you're talking about but you keep trying.

Someone pass this guy an autistic kid to take care of for a month so he can find out for himself...anyone?

It's the parents who are the nightmare, not the kids. I taught for 10 years. The kids are great. Parents suck.

most parents don't get the support they need and they think it's bad parenting because they're told this by everyone around them. "Oh, no. Your kid is totally normal. All kinds of kids line up cars like that and spin their wheels. It's just you" But it's all because they want to get out of their responsibilities right? Riiiiight.

I wonder if there have been stat's taken on bad parents of normal children vs. bad parents of special needs children. It would be interesting to see if one group was being held to a higher standard than the other as well.

I believe Kelli in TFA has a few spares, like 4. No helping that level of bad parenting, had one? Stop breeding farkwit!